Tag Archives: bourbon

We have kicked the rust off the wheels and are out of the gate running in 2017. With each week, we are bringing in a new whiskey for our tasting and review sessions. Well this week, we have the 10 year Russell’s Reserve Bourbon sitting in our great GlenCairn Whisky Glasses ready for our review. This was a cliff hanger choice after our week 1 selection of 2017.. How is the best way to you enjoy it? Well you are 30 minutes away from that answer.. Train.. Train…

It is tough when you already start 2017 and Pappy Van Winkle is moving down the list on the best tasting Bourbon’s of 2017.. Yes, you read that correctly.. We got a new number one but that isn’t overly suprising if you listened to our last podcast. That is all we are going to say in this blog.. Not that we are disappointed with Russell’s Reserve at all, just that Pappy Van Winkle didn’t measure up..

Now, we have said it before and we will keep saying it again. We are so very greatly with the awesome line up of companies we are working with during this podcast. We like to think of each of our sponsors / partners as part of our extended Whiskey On The Rails family. When you get to pair up such great products, it is really fun to come out and record every week because we stand behind everything we talk about and enjoy each of the products we get to use during the show. Even Eric and Rob get along during the podcast because of these great products and that right there is a miracle..

We are some hosts when it comes to Thanksgiving. We aren’t only lining our tables with some great Turkey and fixing but quenching our thirst with some Wild Turkey 101. Our GlenCairn Glasses were filled with Whiskey and we were entertained by our original guest sitting in the Hotel Tango Guest Seat, Patrick. Patrick made his return after a day of waiting over night for his spot on the show, so really this was his attempt at getting ready for Black Friday. Well what happens when you mix 101 proof whiskey with guys who were ready to drink? Pure magic.. Train.. Train…

It is really that perfect time of the year when some awesome family holidays are lined up back to back. Each of the hosts have a list of family traditions that really make the holidays. While we were discussing this across each of the hosts, we found that we both have a completely different approach to our holiday festivities during Thanksgiving. The biggest seems to be around a simple game.. Football.. While our pre-game seems to be the same: food, whiskey and family.. The end of the story really seems to be completely different.. An American result depending upon how you look at it..

Most people will sit down with their Thanksgiving lunches (or dinners) and catch a days worth of football. When you have three NFL games and a handful of College Football games, there is plenty of opportunities to watch some pigskin. Well that is where Rob lives during his Thanksgiving experience with his friends and family.. Eric has a unique spin that seems like it should be replicated during the 4th of July timeframe. As he describes it, they are the post office of Cornhole players.. No matter rain, sleet, snow or shine, they are playing Cornhole as a family.. Which again, traditions are great things when you are spending them with family.

Now we will say this during the podcast. We had a great time bring back our buddy Patrick. Everybody should have a friend like Patrick. He always makes you laugh, he would do anything to help you out and he almost never says no to a whiskey drink. Perfect guest for this holiday episode. We hope that everybody enjoys their holidays with friends and family..

Now, we have said it before and we will keep saying it again. We are so very greatly with the awesome line up of companies we are working with during this podcast. We like to think of each of our sponsors / partners as part of our extended Whiskey On The Rails family. When you get to pair up such great products, it is really fun to come out and record every week because we stand behind everything we talk about and enjoy each of the products we get to use during the show. Even Eric and Rob get along during the podcast because of these great products and that right there is a miracle..

Just like back to the future, we all gotta go back in time. Well for our hosts, today’s bourbon was sort of a trip down memory lane. We broke out some Beer Barrel Bourbon from New Holland Brewing. A stout barrel housing some aged bourbon equals what in a drinking equation? Well you can certainly find out in this episode. Plus we got to enjoy one of Eric’s favorite cigars, Nub by Oliva (Connecticut) as we took a walk down memory lane and enjoyed his favorite cigar. What was the answer to the equation? What was the final result? Why did we have to make an apology to Bono? All these answers can be answered in our podcast.. Train.. Train..

Well in this blog, we are talking about some of our history that is going to come full circle in this podcast. As we say during the podcast, we are going back to the future when it comes to this beer barrel bourbon. Well as some people might not know, Eric and Rob were in a long standing beer podcast prior to Whiskey On The Rails. So we ran the gauntlet when it came to different types of beers and more specifically the vice versa of this bourbon in a bottle of Bourbon Barrel Beer. Which the vice versa was a great quality experience because you were getting all of those season nodes from the whiskey and bourbon coming through the flavor of the beer.. In this case, they tried to do the reverse of it by aging it three months in a stout beer. Which we won’t get into our review of the bourbon in this thread, we will save it for the podcast.

Now here is where we did some planning when it came to our cigar pairing because we had read the company overview from New Holland on this beer. We made an assumption that with the creamy taste of the stout, it would be a great combination with the lively and cream taste of the Connecticut Nub and it would be a great step in the enjoyment process. We can’t tell you how many Nubs we have enjoyed on this podcast because it is one of Eric’s favorite and go-to-cigars when we are sitting around drinking, bartending or out on the golf course. The cigar isn’t one that you gotta make that day long, evening long or golfing round commitment to smoking. It is one that goes as long as you need it because lets face it.. It is a 4” cigar.. So it is perfect for almost every cigar opportunity because it does the trick… It doesn’t need to be touched up all day if you are keeping on it and not hot boxing the cigar experience. You want some more information on this cigar, well check out our first-third segment and hear more about one of our most commonly smoked cigars..

Now, we have said it before and we will keep saying it again. We are so very greatly with the awesome line up of companies we are working with during this podcast. We like to think of each of our sponsors / partners as part of our extended Whiskey On The Rails family. When you get to pair up such great products, it is really fun to come out and record every week because we stand behind everything we talk about and enjoy each of the products we get to use during the show. Even Eric and Rob get along during the podcast because of these great products and that right there is a miracle..

When we have produced our past blogs, we have always given a bit of a teaser on our podcast or given some non-aired entertainment value that we enjoyed but just hit the editing room floor. This blog is going to be a little bit different, since we have some awesome partnerships with Bugatti Cigars and Cigars International, we want to provide some cigar reviews of the cigars we enjoyed during our podcast recordings. While we do talk about the pairing during the podcast, here is some more specific information on our review.

During this podcast, we decided to break out the bourbon brother of a favorite rye we had in the past. We are huge fan of Bulleit Rye and really use that as our “compare against” flavor when it comes to almost any rye we review on our podcast. Well in this podcast, we brought out Bulleit Bourbon Frontier Whiskey and paired it up with a Bugatti Quattro San Andres Maduro cigar for a complete flavor experience. Of course, we only have 30 minutes during our podcast so lets talk about the “First-Third” cigar experience during our blog today.

We fired up our Bugatti Quattro San Andres Maduro cigar and got to experience this full flavor cigar in all its glory. When you think of Bugatti, you are thinking of speed, excellence and over all car driving excitement. Well why should that experience only end with your driving experience? That experience is rolled into our whiskey experience because we had this full flavor Maduro punched and ready to light up.. Our cigar has a beautiful chocolate appearance with a black and gold wrapper with the Bugatti Quattro branding blazing out and just needing a lit on the cigar to begin our experience.

As we indicated, we punched our cigar because that is our usual course of smoking them based upon our Jet Lighter. While we find it gives a better draw on the cigars, especially when you fire it up, it has become our choice for the cut. The four channel burners give a straight and consistent burn when you are firing it up and with this cigar, it certainly does it justice on ignite. With the blend of seeds (per Bugatti, Dominican and Nicaraguan Cuban seed) it only gives a few strong seconds of burning and your day is immediately getting better… Because mine is with this cigar fired up and bellowing savoring flavor coming off this Maduro.

The flavor profile of this cigar is quite flavorful on the first-third of this cigar. Now I am basing this off of the bourbon profiles I am mixing it with but up front it has a great pepper profile on each draw. My bourbon has a lot of sweet profiles and this cigar has a lot of spice in each draw. When we are saying spicy, we aren’t talking like you are having a mouth full of habanero peppers which makes you want to drive yourself into your next drink to save your palate. It is completely a masterful mixture of ying-yang now here is a bit of a twist we want to say with this cigar. While we were recording we were smoking the cigars but had to take a break since we needed to get a bar open and start bartending so I got half way through my first-third of this Bugatti Cigar and left it sitting in my ashtray.

A few hours after letting my cigar settle, we fired it back up since we had some down time and friends who were smoking their own cigars and drinking their variety of spirits. What we immediately learned, we were picking right back up in our cigar experience because the flavor profile, the burn and more importantly the enjoyment haven’t been replaced with this cigar. While the spice was still there, we had a refreshing hint of sweetness that joined the cigar as we were burning through the first third of the cigar. It is very apparent in the smell with our bellowing smoke that we have a cigar that isn’t one that people want to avoid or move away from but ask one simple question.. What are you smoking? You want to know? Well that is easy.. We are smoking a Bugatti Quattro San Andres Maduro which you can quickly purchase at Cigars International…

Kicking off the recording rust is never easy to do following a vacation. Well in this episode, we certainly had some rust since we hadn’t recorded in a week however thanks to a venture through Wisconsin we picked up some new great whiskeys and bourbons. We are drinking some youthful bourbon from the Central Standard Distillery in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. We paired the bourbon with a Bugatti San Andres Claro Cigar, which you can pick up at Cigars International. It took us a minute or two to get going in this episode however we had two great products to get us up and going. Train.. Train..

Alright, so we want to apologize upfront with this podcast and blog because we were kicking off some serious rust and getting our recording out for this week. We try to stay within a few days of recording (usually about three days) however we recorded and put out this podcast within 24 hours of our normal podcast release time. Given that information and one that we were a little rusty thanks to some vacation time, we came out slow in this recording. While this isn’t a normal occurrence, we did have a great combination of both bourbon and cigars in this podcast. Each has it own story..

While we were cutting through Milwaukee, on our way up north for vacation, we stopped in to Central Standard Distillery to snag some of their bourbon they released back in October. We knew that because we went to their Year 1 party back in 2015 and wouldn’t you know it, we hit the same location again for their 2nd Annual extravaganza. To make sure we had the whiskey and it wasn’t forgotten during the celebration, we tried to stop in right when they opened to pick up a bottle.. Wouldn’t you know it, they were closed for another hour while they were prepping. Now to some, that might have just been a sign to turn around and find a bar and wait an hour. Well not for this host, I happened to notice somebody going into a back door and I was more than happy to hold the door. Now since I have bartended for years, I always hate it when people come in before we are officially opened (especially on a big celebration day) but when you say I just want to buy a bottle and leave, people seem very happy to help you.. Heck, they even upsold me on another whiskey.. I mean seriously, why get one whiskey when you can get two different kinds and review them later. So more of this story will be saved for the podcast but we do appreciate the folks from Central Standard Distillery hooking me up with my whiskey and for a great event.. Congrats for year two!!!

Now Bugatti, well this has been a discussion we have been having for about two months. It all started around a sample question.. Would you care to sample and review some of our cigars? Ummmmmm, yes!!! Now we aren’t talking about a small sample, I am talking enough cigars for both hosts to enjoy and a variety that seemed to fit almost every situation. We are talking, cigars that burn extremely slow, have a great flavor profile and live up to the Bugatti name.. Now this section will be a little bit shorter than the one above because we plan to do something different in the next few blogs. When we have a Bugatti cigar as part of the whiskey review, we are going to give that cigar a bit more love in the blog. We want to throw out a few more cigars reviews on the Bugatti cigars and give you some insights on what we like and might not like on the cigars. Which is great about all of these cigars, you can pick them up at our friendly Cigars International sponsor.. How great is that?

Now, we have said it before and we will keep saying it again. We are so very greatly with the awesome line up of companies we are working with during this podcast. We like to think of each of our sponsors / partners as part of our extended Whiskey On The Rails family. When you get to pair up such great products, it is really fun to come out and record every week because we stand behind everything we talk about and enjoy each of the products we get to use during the show. Even Eric and Rob get along during the podcast because of these great products and that right there is a miracle..

When you got your inner “insert Rick Flair’s” woooooo channeled, it makes for a great opportunity to start drinking some awesome whiskey.. Especially when you bounce back from a challenging evening of people buying you drinks. Hey, it is a problem and one that we don’t mind having. Well our fuel today was our second bottle (because we finished off the first bottle after a football draft) of Blanton’s Original Single-Barrel Bourbon. Your hosts took this bourbon and went through our traditional three ways of trying the bourbon, via neat, rocks and our whisky stones. While we won’t go into a lot of detail on our tasting results (in this blog), we will speak to some of the great pieces of this bottle of bourbon..

When you first get the bottle, it almost feels like you have won a major award!! The bottle has an awesome crystal type of design and gives you very specific information about your whiskey. Meaning, when it was bottled, what wear-house it was from and the rick is was housed. The second piece that runs with this bottle is the cork-topper for the bottle. Since some great things come out of Kentucky, we gotta believe the crown jewel would be the Kentucky Derby. They use a beautiful horse medallion to top the cork on this bottle which really sets off an outstanding presentation before you even purchase the product. There is no doubt where this bourbon is from just by looking at the bottle. Now the taste, we will save that for the podcast.. Stay tuned..

One item that we touched upon in our podcast was the recommendation we received from our local liquor store. While I was originally looking for a completely separate whiskey, the representative from the store showed me what I was looking for but wanted to offer his suggestion for a slightly cheaper option (granted this bottle was $60, so cheaper was better than the $100 I was originally introduced to for a future podcast). He said that certain bottles they hand pick to bring into the store based upon taste, style and name recognition. Each has a stamped copper medallion (or copper sticker in a cool design), which identifies these bottles and each of the workers can tell you more about the products and why they choose it.. I will be honest, I had never tasted Blanton’s before I went into the store and honestly before he even recommended it to me the bottle had already caught my attention.. I guess this place is an awesome place for my whiskey signature selections for future podcasts. Gotta keep it a secret for a little while..

At the end of the day, we got another great bourbon on the shelves and another great recording. We did enjoy having a lot of viewers on our periscope line (sponsored by Hotel Tango) and giving some great suggestions while we were recording.. We do love our sponsors and want you to learn more about them.. If you want to learn more about them, please click on the individual links below or feel free to click on the sponsor’s link at the top right corner of our webpage. You can find each of their website, facebook and twitter links.

While we are taking our journey on the rails, we get the pleasure of mixing in some of our favorite whiskeys in the weekly podcasts and blogs. We know that we aren’t always going to pick a winner at random, so when we have the control on the choosing our whiskey, it makes for an easy podcast. Plus when one of the hosts is a virgin to the whiskey, it just makes life even better. So this week, we are talking about one of Beam Suntory’s own whiskeys, Basil Hayden’s. In the next couple of weeks, we are going to be talking about new great things coming down the line for our listeners.. So check out this entertaining podcast while we were drinking on the rails.. Train.. Train…Check out this episode!

Alright, so as we gear up for another podcast, Eric and Rob looked up at the scoreboard and decided to pick Number 6 – Lexington Bourbon Whiskey for our horse in this race. Well horse racing or a podcast, it all has a starting point, a half-way and at times a photo finish. We took this opportunity to bring together another opportunity for something new.

While working your way through the bourbon trail, you will certainly stumble upon some great whiskey’s and outstanding distilleries. You can have that same experience of finding new liquors while venturing through your local liquor store.. Granted there aren’t samples, an expert tell you the history about the whiskey’s or even cool people to share the experience. What you do have is a history lesson with each whiskey bottles in the store because each tells a story..

Well this story was sort of a ruse at first because I saw a bottle that looked like a Woodford Reserve on sale for $29.99 and said, holy crap!!! Once I started getting closer to the bottle, I realized that it wasn’t anything close to what I originally thought but the price still had my attention and it was something I had never had before so I figured this was a great bottle to try three different ways on the rails..

As we fired up on our recording, we got to learn something real quick about this whiskey.. If you take it lightly, it will burn your face off.. Yes, that is more of an inside joke that you will get during the podcast but it had a great burn when you tried it neat.. The burn and overall heat quickly went away once we added some ice and water to the whiskey. It made the whiskey a bit more tolerable because it took the edge off and really took away from that bite we might have feared once we tried it but actually look forward to it, once we try our whiskey’s.

We have made the statement prior, if you have to provide a mixture on the best way to enjoy your whiskey, it might not be the best whiskey to try unless you are saying “whiskey & coke please” to your bartender. Lexington’s website provided a drink called the “Horse’s Neck” in their mixology section. Well this was a drink that we fired up in our third section with some ginger-ale, bourbon and while we didn’t add it you would need a dash of bitters to complete the drink. This caused a first between the two hosts because the two completely disagreed on the taste of this drink.

We both enjoy ginger-ale for our mixtures when it comes to whiskey’s but this drink wasn’t favored at all by one of the hosts. Yes, another teaser for listening to the podcast because the story each told on the flavoring really showcased our bartending skills. Yes, another bartending plug.. At the end of the day, we added this whiskey to our shelves and found some great ways to drink Lexington Bourbon Whiskey. There are some great details in our podcast, which will be released on Whiskey Wednesday. Check out our additional thoughts on the podcast and look forward to your thoughts..